Vital biomedical research and integrity of scientific data depend on excellent animal care. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Animal Care and Use Program is committed to the long-term goals of providing and maintaining consistently high quality, healthy animals according to accepted standards at reasonable cost while providing a safe and healthy workplace for personnel. The specific aims of this application are to (1) maintain healthy mice and rats, (2) protect personnel health, and (3) contain costs for Public Health Service (PHS) funded investigators at UAB. The equipment requested (12 individually ventilated caging systems (IVCSs) for mice, 16 IVCSs for rats, and 10 ventilated animal transfer stations) will assist in attaining these long term goals and the specific aims of this proposal. Sixty-one investigators with 101 PHS projects providing $24.5 million in annual active funding and 87 pending projects requesting $83.1 million in total pending funding will benefit from the requested equipment. The investigators who will directly benefit from this proposal have federal funding that supports diverse research interests with translational applicability to cancer, diabetes, vaccine development, immune disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and learning and memory. Fifty-five of these investigators, representing approximately 20 departments have a combined average daily census of 1032 cages of rats. Eighteen investigators representing four departments have a combined average daily census of 2835 cages of mice. The requested equipment will be a part of the infrastructure needed to maintain and support the growth of a nationally and internationally recognized interdisciplinary research program. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]